by Marlon James
“A boy’s weight in silver,” she said.
I said, This sounds like a good offer. What would I know of good or bad offers? I was young. Give me something of his, for I have never seen your husband, I said. She grabbed what looked like a white rug and said, This is what he wears under his garment. Are you married to a man or a mountain? I said. The cloth was twice as wide as the span of my arm and still carried the trace of his sweat, shit, and piss. I did not tell her there were two different shits in this cloth, one from him and another from him pleasuring someone’s ass. As soon as I smelled him I knew where he was. But I knew where he was when she said burning flower.
“Be careful. Many mistake him for Ogo,” she said.
Only one thing smelled of burning flower. Only one thing smelled like something rich burned away.
Opium.
It came from the merchants in the East. Now there were secret dens in every city. Nobody I knew who had taken it had a tomorrow. Or a yesterday. Just a now, in a den with smoke, which made me wonder if this man was opium’s seller or slave or a thief of men under opium.
The smell of the husband and the opium led me to the street for artists and masters of craft. Fasisi streets had no plan. A wide street twisted into a narrow lane, burped into a river with just a rope bridge, then another lane again. Most of the houses had thatch roofs and walls built of clay. On the highest hill in the delta, the royal compound sat behind thick walls guarded by sentries. I tell you, it was a mystery why this, the least magnificent of the northern cities, was the capital of the empire. Nyka said this is the city that reminded the King of where we came from and to never go back, but he does not yet enter this story. Fasisi smiths are the masters of iron, if not manners. And iron is what made this backward town conquer the North two hundred years ago.
I stopped at an inn whose name meant “Light from a Woman’s Buttocks” in my language. They locked the windows shut but left the door open. Inside, many men lay wherever there was floor, on their backs, their eyes here but gone, their mouths leaking drool, their owners uncaring as the remnants of embers tipped from pipe bowls and burned out on their robes. A woman in the corner stood over a large pot that smelled of soup missing peppers and spices. Truth, it smelled more like the hot water used to skin an animal. Some of the men moaned, but most kept quiet, as if in sleep.
I passed a man smoking tobacco under a torch. He sat on a stool and leaned his back against the wall. Thin face, two large earrings, strong chin, though that might have been the light. The front half of his head he shaved, leaving the back to grow long. Goatskin cape. He did not look at me. From another room came music, which was odd, since nobody in this hall would notice. I stepped over men who did not move, men who could see me but had eyes only for the pipe. The burning-flower smell of opium was so thick that I held my breath. One never knew. Upstairs a boy screamed and a man cursed. I ran upstairs.
For someone not an Ogo this husband was as huge as one. He stood there, taller than the doorway, taller than the tallest cavalry horse. Naked, and raping a boy. I could only see his legs dangling, lifeless. But he was bawling. His two giant hands grabbed the boy’s buttocks while he forced himself. The wife did not want him dead, I thought, but said nothing about wanting him whole.
I pulled two throwing daggers, little ones, and flung them at his back. One cut across his shoulder. The husband yelled, dropped the boy, and turned around. The boy landed on his back and didn’t move. I watched him, waited too long. The husband was upon me, all muscle and skin, his shoulders massive like an ape’s, his hand grabbing my entire head. He picked me up like a doll and threw me across the room. He growled as he had while raping. The boy rolled over and grabbed one of the rugs. The man, like a buffalo, charged at me. I dodged and he ran right into the wall, cracking it and almost bursting right through. I grabbed a hatchet to chop his heel, but he reached back and kicked me all the way to the wall on the other side. It slammed the breath out of my mouth and I fell. The boy scrambled, stepping on my legs as he ran out. The man pulled his head out of the wall. His skin dark, wet from sweat, hairy like a beast’s. He batted away a line of spears leaning on the wall. Truly I knew men who were big and men who were fast but no man who was both. I pulled myself up and tried to run but his hand was around my neck again. He cut my breath off, and that wasn’t enough. He would crush my bone. I couldn’t reach knife or hatchet. I punched, thumped, scratched his arms, but he laughed as if I was the boy he was raping. He glared at me and I saw his black eyes. My sight was going dark and my spit ran down his hand. He even had me off the floor. Blood was ready to burst out of my eyes. I barely saw the man from downstairs break a clay jar on the man’s back. The husband swung around and the man threw something yellow and rank in his eyes. The not-Ogo dropped me and fell to his knees, screaming and rubbing his eyes as if about to scratch them out. Air rushed into me and made me fall to my knees as well. The man grabbed my arm.
“Is he blind?” I asked.
“Maybe for the next few blinks, maybe for a quartermoon, maybe forever, you can never tell with bat piss.”
“Bat piss? Did you s—”
“A giant is just as dangerous blind, young boy.”
“I’m not a boy, I’m a man.”
“Die as a man, then,” he said, and ran out. I ran after him. He laughed all the way out the door.
He said his name was Nyka. No family name, no house of origin, no place he called home, and no home he was running from. Just Nyka.
We hunted together for a year. I was good at finding everything but business. He was good at finding everything but people. I should have known but he was right, I was a boy. He made me wear robes, which I did not like, for they made fighting difficult, but people in some cities took me for his slave when I wore only a wrap. Most towns we went to, nobody knew of this Nyka. But everywhere we went where somebody knew him, they wanted to kill him. In a bar in the Uwomowomowomowo valley I saw a woman walk right up to him and slap him twice. She would a third time, but he caught her hand. She pulled a knife with the other and grazed his chest. Later that night my hand was between my legs as I heard them fuck across the room.
Once we searched for a dead girl who was not dead. Her kidnapper kept her in a burial urn in the ground behind his house, and took her out whenever he wanted amusement. He gagged her mouth and bound her hands and feet. When we found him he had just put his children to sleep and left his wife to go around the back to do things to this girl. He pulled away loose plants and scooped away dirt, and took out the hollow stick that he stuck in the top of the urn so that she could breathe. But this night it was not her in the urn, but Nyka. He stabbed the man in the side and he staggered back yelling. I kicked him in the back and he fell. I took a club and knocked him out. He woke up tied to the tree near where he buried the girl. She was weak and could not stand. I put my hand on her mouth, telling her to stay quiet, and gave her a knife. We steadied her hand as she pushed the knife down into his belly, then chest, then belly again over and over. He screamed into the gag until he would scream no more. I would have the girl get satisfaction. The knife fell out of her hand and she lay next to the dead man, crying. Something changed in Nyka after that. We were liars and thieves but we were not killers.
I tell you all this because I want you to see him as I saw him. Before.
Business was drying up in Fasisi. I grew tired of the place and wives missing husbands every seven days. We were at the same inn we always went to split our profits. And drink palm wine or masuku beer or liquor the colour of amber, which set fire in the chest and made the floor slippery. The fat innkeeper with a frown line right above the wart above her brow came over.
“Pour us both the bottled fire,” Nyka said.
She produced two mugs and filled both halfway. She said nothing, not even when Nyka slapped her buttocks as she went back to the counter.
“Good fortune awaits in the city of Malakal, or the Uwomowomowomowo valley below,” I said.
“Good fortune yo
u thinking? What if I am hungry for adventure?”
“North?”
“I think I shall see my mother,” he said.
“You said before, the second-greatest thing you two gave each other was distance. You have also said you have no mother.”
He laughed. “That is still true.”
“Which?”
“How much bottled fire did you drink?”
“Which mug is yours?”
“You drank from it?” he asked. “Good. When last we talked of fathers, you said you fought yours. One day my father, he comes in from a day of not working, only scheming and plotting and going nowhere. Hitting us was sport. One time he hit my brother in the back of the head with the walking stick and my brother was simple after that. My mother made sorghum bread. He beat her too. One time he whipped her with the walking stick, and she hopped on one foot for two moons and limped after that. So yes, let us say that this was a night he comes home from drink and swings the cane and hits me in the back of the head. Then he kicks and beats me on the ground, knocks another tooth loose, shouting for me to get up and take more. One day we shall talk just of fathers, Tracker. So yes, let us say he swings the stick at my head, but he’s too slow, and I too fast, and I catch it. Then I grab the stick from him and swing it to his head. He falls, just like that, on the floor. I take the stick and beat him and beat him, and he holds up his hand, and I break all his fingers, and he holds up his arms, and I break his arms, and he holds up his head and I break his head till I heard crack, crack, crack and still I beat, and then I hear crunch, and then sloosh, slosh, and my mother screams, You killed my husband, you killed your brothers’ father. How will we eat? I burned him behind our hut. Nobody asked for him, because nobody liked him, and everybody rejoiced at the smell of his burning flesh.”
“And your mother?”
“I know my mother. She is right where I left her. And yet I will see her, Tracker. I leave in two days. Then we can go on whatever adventure you like.”
“You are the one always seeking adventure. Meet me in Malakal.”
“Meet me where you smell my scent. A lazy night this is, and we have fucked out the entire quarter. Drink some more.”
I drank and he drank until we tamed that fire in the chest, and then we drank more. And he said, Let us forget talk of fathers, friend. Then he kissed me on the mouth. This was nothing; Nyka kissed all and everyone, in greeting or parting.
“I shall find you in ten days,” I said to him.
“Eight is the better number,” he said. “More than seven days with my mother and all I can do is try not to kill her. Drink some more.”
A warmth, first on my forehead, ran down my neck. I opened my eyes and the piss hit my face and blinded me. I rubbed my eyes without thinking, and my right hand pulled my left. A shackle on my right hand, a chain, a shackle on my left. In front of me, a leg raised and piss spurting on me. Off in the dark, loud laughter. I lashed out but the chain stopped me. I tried to stand, I tried to scream, the women in the dark laughed louder. The animal, the beast, the dog pissed on me like I was the trunk of a tree. First I thought Nyka just left me drunk in an alley to be pissed on by dogs. Or someone, a madman or a slaver—they infested these alleys—or a husband who did not want me to find him now found me. My mind went wild, thinking three men or four, or five had found me in the alley and said, Here is the man who took the comfort from our lives. But men did not laugh like women. The dog lowered his foot and trotted away. The floor was dirt and I could make out walls. My mind went wild again. I would ask, Who are you men that I shall soon kill, but something gagged my mouth.
Popping out of the dark first, two red eyes. Then teeth, long and white and ready. Light was above me when I looked up, light peeking through branches hiding this hole. A trap I fell into. A trap long forgotten, so that even the trapper would not know that I shall die here. But who put a gag in my mouth? Was it so that I could not scream while it bit into me and tore chunks apart? And yet before I saw the face, when it was just eyes and teeth, the piss told me everything. The hyena backed up in the dark, then charged straight at me. Another jumped out of the dark from the side and knocked her in the ribs, and they both rolled into the dark, scowling, growling, barking. Then they stopped and started laughing again.
“Men in the West call us the Bultungi. You have unfinished business with us,” she said in the dark.
I would have said I have no business with spotted devils, or that nothing glorious springs from deceiving scavengers, but I had a gag in my mouth. And hyenas, from what I knew, had no qualm with live flesh.
The three came out of the dark: a girl; a woman older, perhaps her mother; and a still older woman, thin, with her back straight. The girl and the old woman wore nothing. The girl, her breasts like large plums, hips spread wide; her nana, a sprout of black-haired bush. The old woman, her face mostly cheekbones, her arms and frame thin, and her breasts lanky. The middle woman, her hair in braids, wore a red boubou tunic with rips and smudges. Wine, or dirt, or blood, or shit, I didn’t know; I could smell all of them. Also this. I looked into the dark for the male who pissed on me, but no man came. But the two naked women came in the little light, and I saw it on both of them. Long cocks, or what looked like cocks between their legs, thick and swinging quick.
“Behold, it looks at us,” the middle one said.
“Look at hyena womankind, longer and harder than you,” the young one said.
“Shall we eat it now? Take him in? Limb by limb?” the old one said.
“Will you raise much fuss, man? Living or dead flesh makes no difference to us,” the middle one said.
“Come, come no fuss, rend the flesh, juice the blood, eat it, us,” the old one said.
“I say we kill him now,” the young one said.
“No, no, eat him slow, start with the feet, precious meat,” the old woman said.
“Now.”
“Later.”
“Now!”
“Later!”
“Quiet!” the middle one shouted, then swung her arms wide and struck both.
The young one changed first, in a blink. Her nose and mouth and chin shot out of her face and her eyes went white. The muscles on her shoulder pumped and popped up, and those in her arms raised from arm to fingertip as if snakes ran under the skin. On the old woman her chest spread as if new flesh was tearing out of the old, all under her rough skin. Her face went the same. Her fingers, now black claws, the tips like iron. All this happened far quicker than I describe it. The old woman growled, and the young girl did the heh-heh-heh laugh that was not a laugh. The old woman charged the middle one but she swatted her away like a fly. The old woman pawed the ground, thinking to charge again.
“It took your ribs five moons to heal last time,” the middle one said.
“Take the gag out and let him give us sport,” the old one said. The young one changed back to girl. She came to me and indeed her smell was foul. Whatever she last ate, she ate days ago and chunks of it rotted somewhere on her body. She ran her hands around the back of my head and I thought of banging my head against the wall, anything, even the slightest thing to resist. She laughed and her foul breath ran past my nose. She pulled the gag and I coughed up vomit. They all laughed. She came in close to my face as if about to lick the vomit off, or kiss it.
“A comely bitch, this one be,” she said.
“As man goes, he will not be the worst to go down my stomach,” the old one said.
“Long in leg, thin in muscle, lean in fat, he will not be much of a meal,” said the old one.
“Salt him with his brains, and add some hog fat to his flesh,” said the young one.
“I give him this,” said the middle one. “In the only matter that counts with man, he impresses me. How do you run with it swinging so low?”
I coughed until my throat was raw.
“Maybe he will have water,” the old one said.
“I have in me some strong water,” the young one said, and laughed. She
hiked up her left leg and grabbed her dangling cock, then laughed instead of pissed. The old one laughed as well.
The middle one stepped forward. She said, “We are the Bultungi, and you have unfinished business with us.”
“Unfinished business I will finish with my hatchet,” I coughed. They all laughed.
“Chop it off, place it in another room, and boom! Man still acting like he swinging,” said the old one.
“Old bitch, not even me understand that,” said the young one.
The middle one stood right before me. “Do you not remember us?” she said.
“The hyena has never been a memorable beast.”
“Make me give him something to remember,” the young one said.
“Truly who remembers the hyena? You look like the head of a dog pushing out of the asshole of cat walking backwards.”
The old and middle women laughed, but the young one flipped to fury. She changed. Still on two legs, she charged for me. Middle one kicked her leg out and tripped her. Young one landed hard on her chin and slid a little. She crouched and growled at the middle one, then started to circle her as if about to fight over fresh kill. She growled again, but the middle one, still in the form of woman, let loose a snarl louder than a roar. Maybe the room shook or maybe the young one, but even I felt something shift. She whimpered heh-heh-hehs under her breath.
“How long since you saw our sisters?”
I coughed again.
“I stay away from half-dead hogs and rotting antelope, so I would never see your sisters.”
I only noticed now, with her close, that her eyes were all white as well. The old one went off in the dark but her eyes popped out of the black.
“And what sisters? You boy-beasts who change to women, what are you?”
They all laughed.
“Surely you know us. We are the beasts where the woman do the tasking and the men do the tasks. And since men have made it that the biggest cock rules ground and sky, does it not make sense that woman should have the biggest cock?” said the middle one.
